


The Light

by clare_dragonfly



Category: Vampire Party (Audi 2012 Game Day Commercial)
Genre: F/M, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:23:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clare_dragonfly/pseuds/clare_dragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the biggest damn party of the century and you’d better believe Tricia wasn’t going to miss it for the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vyola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyola/gifts).



> Warning for canonical background character death.

It’s the biggest damn party of the century and you’d better believe Tricia wasn’t going to miss it for the world. She’s dressed in her favorite new clothes and her friends are all here with her. They have a giggle at Desmond (did he miss the memo that this was a contemporary-dress party?), then she goes off to get a drink, and when she turns around there’s Ian.

She hasn’t seen him for a century but he still looks exactly the same. Of course, she does, too.

She grins and smacks him on the shoulder. “Hey, you! When did you get so old?”

It’s a completely lame joke, and they’re both at least fifty years too old to find “vampires live a long time” jokes funny anymore, but he laughs anyway and her heart flutters and she decides she wouldn’t have missed this party for the _universe_.

“It’s good to see you, Trish,” he says with a grin.

She sighs out a breath, slightly astonished at how happy she is to see him. “You, too, Ian. How are you? Where are you these days? Last I heard, you were living in New York with your sire. Is she still around?” She tries not to make it obvious how very much she hopes the answer is no.

“Oh, I’m sure she is.” The way he shrugs and wrinkles his nose makes it clear that he doesn’t much care where his sire is exactly. Her heart rises. “She dumped me a while back. Got a new toy. A girl this time.”

“Well, I wish them luck with each other.” She glances around. “They’re not coming?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t seen them yet, and I’m perfectly happy not to.” He grins, eyes flashing with pleasure. “I’m much happier the way I am. I’ve actually been living in a state park. The tourists come and go, there are always animals, and it’s incredibly gorgeous year-round.”

“That… sounds amazing, actually.” She can just picture it, living in a place like this all year, maybe with Ian… She shouldn’t be thinking like that yet. What if they have a break like he did with his sire, or like she did with Marek all those decades ago? Nothing’s permanent, not life, not even undeath. Yeah, she likes him, but until they talk more—a lot more—it’s not productive to imagine an undeath with him for the next century or so.

But it is pleasant, so she’s not going to stop herself too hard. “But doesn’t it get lonely?” she asks at last, half as a real question, half as a flirt.

“It does.” He looks straight into her eyes and her heart gives another flutter. “That’s why I couldn’t miss the party. And if I go back to the park—if I don’t find somewhere better to go—I wouldn’t mind having someone to share the place with. But we’ll see what happens.” He glances away, and there’s a moment of awkward silence until he breaks it, asking, “How about you? What are you up to these days?”

“Oh, I’ve been RVing around the country for the last forty years. Me and some of my friends.” She gestures over her shoulder to them, to make sure he knows she didn’t come alone but she’s also not seeing anyone right now. “It’s a lot of fun, actually. You get to see different places, meet different people, and nobody really cares if you do everything at night and disappear by morning or if you don’t have any proper ID.”

“ID is tough these days,” he agrees. “That’s another reason for living in the park—as long as I keep out of sight, there’s no reason for anyone to ask for ID. RVing around does sound like a lot of fun. I used to do something like that back when sailing ships were still around. I could always get a job—I’d surprise the captains, because I look twenty-five but I’d climb rigging like a veteran and prime a cannon faster than anybody.”

She laughs. “I bet you could. Not too fast, I hope, so they tried to hang you.”

“Oh, once or twice. But I always managed to sneak away at the last minute.” He winks.

“You know, I do a bit of climbing myself.” She nods toward a tall tree, the tallest she can see. It’s bare on the lower portions, too. A nice challenge. “Mostly flagpoles and telephone poles. For scouting and such. You still in practice?”

“Me? I’m the one who’s been living in a park!” He sets down his cup and moves toward the tree. “I bet I’ll make it to the top in half the time you do.”

“Oh, you’re on.” She sets down her cup as well and joins him. They lock eyes for just a moment, grinning grins that are simultaneously flirtatious and fiercely competitive, and then they are up the tree.

It’s a rush, a rush of air and adrenaline and height—faster than any human could ever go, faster than any really living thing could move its joints, because living joints would fall apart. He’s ahead, she’s ahead, he’s ahead again—there’s no time to react or adjust their speeds, even with their superfast reaction times, because it’s barely a second before they’ve reached the highest point on the tree that will support them. Her head is just at the level of his waist when he stops and she hauls himself up next to him.

“I win,” he says, smiling fiercely at her.

“Our bet was that you’d make it in half the time,” she retorts. “That wasn’t even close.”

“I think I win anyway,” he says, and kisses her.

His lips are cold, cold as ice, cold as the sweetness of death, and she kisses him back, and they lose themselves in their ice-sweet kisses until sounds from below distract them.

“Damn, it’s bright down there,” says Ian, squinting. “Is that Richard with his new—oh, no. Oh hell no.”

“What is it?” She squints down, but it’s so bright, she can’t understand it. And where is everyone? It’s quiet down there, too quiet, even to her enhanced vampire senses. There’s hardly any movement. And then someone—Richard, she recognizes him—gets out of a car and walks around in front of it—

And vanishes into dust.

Her heart hammers in her chest. She sucks in a breath to lungs unused to it, and it makes her whole body shudder, or maybe it’s the fear. She’s never feared much in her long undeath. But she fears this, this strange weapon.

“What on earth could have done that?” she whispers.

“I don’t know,” says Ian, his voice low. “But they’re all dead. All of them.” He grabs her hand and squeezes it with a grip that is almost painful. “We have to get out of here.”

“Why? Can’t we help them?”

“There’s nothing we can do! If we go straight down, we’ll be destroyed by that light. There’s no way to escape it but by getting as far away as we can. But that must be a hunter.”

“Richard was in the car,” Tricia points out. “Why would he be working with a hunter?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Ian says firmly. “But where there’s one hunter there’s more, and they must have known that this was a regular party. They’ll be looking for any stragglers. We have to get away from here. Tricia, please.”

She looks into his face. He’s afraid, too. “All right. But what do we tell people, if we find them?”

He shakes his head. “We’ll figure something out. But the most important thing is, we can’t come back here.”

“Not tonight.”

“Not ever.”

She looks down at where her RV is parked, sees she won’t be able to get to it without passing through the light, and nods reluctantly. “Okay. Right. What was it you were saying about a state park?”

He grins and pulls her close to kiss her fiercely. “You’ll love it, Trish. Just you and me.”

“I can live with that,” she says, and they laugh together as they leap to the next tree, and the next, running from the light. When they run out of trees they climb to the ground, and they run fast, fast as only vampires can, until they find a place to hide from morning.

And Tricia decides she doesn’t care if it might go wrong. They’re together for now, and that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the commercial once, and I thought "aww, those two vampires climbing the tree are totally flirting." I watched it a second time, and I thought "they never come down from that tree, do they?" I watched it a third time, and I thought "they definitely did not come down from the tree. They're not dead!"


End file.
